Brian Kennedy, an economics major from Port Washington, N.Y., is one of two Bates seniors to receive 2014 Watson Fellowships.

Kennedy joins 42 other college students from across the country, including his Bates classmate Simone Schriger of Los Angeles, who have received this prestigious grant that supports a year of travel and research outside the United States.

Kennedy will travel to Japan, Australia, Ireland and Canada to study commercial production of marine algae and its potential for revitalizing coastal economies in the United States.

A program of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the Watson Fellowship supports a year of international exploration in any field for select graduating college seniors. Each fellow is awarded $28,000 for 12 months of travel as well as college loan assistance as applicable and an insurance allowance.

Recipients come from select private liberal arts colleges and universities across the U.S. This year’s 43 recipients were selected from a pool of nearly 700 candidates overall and 150 finalists.

Growing up along the North Shore of Long Island, Kennedy says, “it’s hard not to interact with seaweed — definitely my first experience with seaweed was probably just throwing it at my siblings.”

But through his Bates studies and other experiences, including a 2013 internship with Maine’s marine algae and aquaculture industries, he developed a fascination with the broad potential of seaweed and other algaes in food and fuel production.

“What fascinates me in economics is the interface between industry and natural resources,” he says.

Kennedy credits his time at Bates as key to his success at competing for the Watson. He found that feedback and support from the Watson Fellowship Committee at Bates was invaluable as he honed his application.

And, he adds, “One thing that Bates really has taught me to do is to just take my own initiative and go with that. It’s so easy to get to know the professors and other people who can help you make something happen.”

Japan points the way

Growing up on Long Island, and later during visits to coastal towns in Maine and elsewhere, Kennedy has witnessed how market and ecological changes have harmed local economies. “Communities that I thought would boast functioning resource economies,” he says, “were changed into regions dependent on federal programs, tourism and property values.”

Kennedy believes that algae, both cultivated and wild-caught, offers a viable means of reviving coastal economies and restoring their working relationships with the ocean. Both seaweed in its myriad forms and microbial algae are relatively sustainable as crops, and relatively easy to harvest wild or to grow.

Bates College senior Brian Kennedy, recipient of a 2014 Watson Fellowship, poses for a portrait in Pettengill Hall.(Sarah Crosby/Bates College)

Key to Kennedy’s Watson research is the investigation of a disparity he perceives in the algae industries of Japan vs. the three Western countries. In Japan, he points out, seaweeds like kombu, wakame and nori are dietary staples that support diverse and sustainable production practices.

But the industry is less developed in Australia, Ireland and Canada. Food plays a smaller role, and industrial chemicals a larger one. Algae is the feedstock for biofuel production in Australia.

“I want to explore aquaculture and harvesting to compare production techniques, management and community impact,” he says.

In particular, he’s interested in structural obstacles — from regulations to financial practices to cultural customs — that curtail the expansion of the marine algae industry in the West.

Kennedy will interview and work beside people in every facet of the field. “I feel confident that I can build a network of communities, processors, seaweed harvesters and aquaculturists, microalgae producers and resource managers that will allow me to accurately assess the potential of algae to sustain coastal communities’ working connection with the ocean.”

He will publish his findings online and in print, notably in his own “algaezine” that will document his findings from the Watson year.

Kennedy got a head start on his algae research last summer, thanks to an internship at the Maine Technology Institute, a Brunswick nonprofit lender that funds technology companies. Assigned to look into MTI’s algae and aquaculture portfolio, he undertook interviews that gave him insight into the basic mechanics of seaweed and microalgae cultivation.

Will Dunbar ’15 (left) of Greenville, S.C., and Colby Harrison ’17 of Kennebunk, Maine, in a scene from the Bates production of “Enjoy,” directed by Brooke O’Harra. (Sarah Crosby/Bates College)

Brooke O’Harra, who joined the Bates College faculty as an assistant professor of theater last fall, directs the Bates production of Enjoy, Toshiki Okada’s black comedy about Japan’s “Lost Generation.”

Performances take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, March 6-7, and Monday, March 10; 5 p.m. Saturday, March 8; and 2 p.m. Sunday, March 9, in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St.

Admission is $6 for the general public and $3 for students and seniors, available through batestickets.com. For more information, please call 207-786-6161. “This bittersweet drama,” wrote New York Times reviewer Jason Zinoman, “is distinguished by a style that turns inarticulateness into the sort of poetry that rewards close listening.”

Premiered in Japan in 2006, the play is a glimpse at the lives of college graduates in their 20s and 30s who have been stranded in low-paying dead end jobs by a decade of economic stagnation. It depicts a group of part-time clerks at a comic book shop — a so-called manga café — thrown off balance by a younger female co-worker, who makes them question the meaning of their lives in a shifting socioeconomic landscape.

Presented at Bates in a translation by Aya Ogawa, this black comedy “captures a specific cultural moment in Japan,” says O’Harra. “It’s at this moment when the characters have just turned 30, which has a very specific cultural significance in Japan — you’re supposed to be sort of settled in your life at 30.”

She says, “Because they don’t have full-time jobs, they’re this kind of weird culture that is considered not particularly productive and not dependable, even though it’s not their fault. They can’t get apartments, so a lot of them live in manga cafes if they don’t want to live with their parents.”

“Inarticulate, but also kind of extraordinary.”

Okada is known for writing what one reviewer calls “hyper-colloquial” dialogue — a stream-of-consciousness style marked by incomplete thoughts, constant interruptions and the absence of linear progress.

“It’s inarticulate, but it’s also kind of extraordinary,” says O’Harra. Adding another layer is the tendency of characters to start talking about other characters — and then assuming the personas of those other characters.

“What’s good about the play is that it uses a kind of invented formal structure to tease out a social moment,” says O’Harra. “He’s taking what feels like a disrupted, stilted, hapless, complicated moment and he’s giving it form. It’s really smart.”

But the play is also replete with playful moments, karaoke singing and even dancing, with Rachel Boggia of the Bates dance faculty helping to develop the choreography.

Enjoy poses a formidable challenge for the Bates students in the cast, who must memorize large chunks of dialogue without the roadmap of a conventional narrative flow. The result will be a production in which the acting is driven less by characterization than a formalized approach to line delivery.

“It’s really good for our student actors to think not in terms of character, but instead in terms of clarity and their relationship to their audience,” says O’Harra, who brought to Bates a rich background in contemporary and experimental theater.

“It’s difficult. For actors to learn a way to perform on a stage or to tell a story that’s nontraditional is really important on the college level, because more and more frequently, contemporary plays really step out of the idea of character and disrupt traditional forms of narrative.”

She says, “It teaches the actors a new way of listening and embodying a script.”

Koichi Kiyono’s “Cultivation II,” etching on cotton-wool and felt with hand sewing, appears in the Museum of Art exhibition “Redefining The Multiple: 13 Japanese Printmakers.”

Images of Maine by famed 20th-century photographer Berenice Abbott and prints by Japanese artists known for pushing the boundaries of printmaking media will be exhibited this fall at the Bates College Museum of Art.

Opening Sept. 13 and showing through Dec. 14 are the exhibitions Redefining The Multiple: 13 Japanese Printmakers and Selections from Berenice Abbott’s “Portrait of Maine.“

Hideki Kimura, whose work is represented in the print show and who co-curated it with Sam Yates, director of the University of Tennessee’s Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture, where the show originated, discusses the exhibition at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, in the museum. A reception follows.

The Abbott images were published in her 1968 book A Portrait of Maine, and the original photographs in Selections were acquired for the Bates museum’s permanent collection from 2005 to 2007.

The exhibitions mark the reopening of the Bates College Museum of Art following a summer spent installing a new, state-of-the-art LED lighting system designed to both reduce the museum’s environmental footprint and improve the museum viewing experience for visitors.

The museum is open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and until 7 p.m. Wednesdays during the academic year. For more information, please call 207-786-6158.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2013/09/09/bold-printmakers-from-japan-maine-images-by-iconic-photographer-featured-at-museum-of-art/feed/0Talk by Lecturer in Spanish David George previewed in European presshttp://www.bates.edu/news/2013/07/10/bpin-spanish-david-george-blasco-ibanez/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2013/07/10/bpin-spanish-david-george-blasco-ibanez/#commentsWed, 10 Jul 2013 17:36:52 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=66734Research by David George, lecturer in Spanish, figured prominently in Continental news...]]>

David George, lecturer in Spanish.

Research by David George, lecturer in Spanish, figured prominently in Continental news reports about a seminar in Spain dedicated to novelist Vicente Blasco Ibáñez.

Not widely known in the U.S. nowadays, Blasco Ibáñez was famous internationally in the 1920s, and Hollywood adapted several of his novels. Held July 3-5, the conference at the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo, in Valencia, looked specifically at the author’s influence on cinema.

George looked at the author’s influence on Japanese film, not American. He discussed his rediscovery of two 1924 films adapted from the fiction of Blasco Ibáñez: Osumi to haha (“Osumi and her mother”), based on the story “The Old Woman of the Cinema,” and Wakasa yo saraba (“Farewell, youth!”), from the novel Woman Triumphant.

“At the summit of his international fame, Blasco Ibáñez was received as a real celebrity” in Japan during a 1923-24 visit, writes George. That buzz helped inspire a rash of translations of his work and, later in 1924, the film productions.

During his short visit, Blasco Ibáñez was surprised to find his picture alongside that of the movie star Rudolph Valentino by the door of a Kyoto cinema showing Blood and Sand, one of the Hollywood adaptations of his work.

George’s presentation concluded that if Blasco didn’t influence the development of Japanese cinema directly, his works did influence a reform of Japanese cinematic language that gave way to directors such as Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2013/07/10/bpin-spanish-david-george-blasco-ibanez/feed/0Orchestra concert raises funds for quake-ravaged Japanese townhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2011/03/16/orchestra-quake-benefit/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2011/03/16/orchestra-quake-benefit/#commentsWed, 16 Mar 2011 13:57:35 +0000http://home.bates.edu/?p=41031Hiroya Miura, conductor of the Bates College Orchestra and a native of Japan, has announced that the orchestra’s March 19 concert will serve as a fundraiser for a town where 1,000 people are thought to have died during the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The orchestra performs music by Beethoven and Richard Strauss at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 19, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. Donations to a relief fund for the coastal town of Yamamoto-cho, 24 miles south of Sendai, will be gratefully accepted.

NBC affiliate WSCH-TV interviews Hiroya Miura, conductor of the Bates College Orchestra, prior to the March 19 concert that raised funds for the people of Yamamoto-cho, Japan.

For more information or to reserve seats, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Miura was born and raised in Sendai, near the epicenter of the earthquake, and his parents currently reside in Yamamoto-cho. According to Wikipedia, the town is one of the areas hardest hit by the quake.

The orchestra will dedicate the concert to the memory of those lost in the disaster, and Miura will personally see that audience donations are delivered to the mayor of Yamamoto-cho.

Including donations received during the March 19 concert and online, more than $8,200 had been raised for Yamamoto-cho by March 22. Donations are still most welcome.

For people unable to attend the concert, donations can made online at www.batestickets.com or mailed to:

About the program

The orchestra will play Beethoven’s landmark Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) and Richard Strauss’ Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments, works that “are full of youthful energy from these two German composers,” Miura says.

The Beethoven symphony is a milestone in symphonic music, a work marking the transition from the formal strictures of the Classical period to the more emotional, organically unfolding style of the Romantic.

The Strauss serenade, meanwhile, is the earliest composition by this late-Romantic composer to endure in the repertoire. It’s scored for flutes, oboes, clarinets, horns, bassoons, contrabassoon or tuba, and bass.

“Eroica,” which Beethoven completed in 1803, was written as he was coming to grips with hearing problems that would culminate in total deafness.

“It was probably the first time in history that a symphony became so intensely personal and dramatic,” Miura says, “and the ‘Eroica’ was by far the longest, and perhaps the most substantial, symphonic work of its time.”

The work makes bold use of brass instruments, especially French horn, “and it’s no surprise that the ‘Eroica’ was one of the most influential works for young Strauss, whose father was an orchestral horn player.

“It’s also no coincidence that this serenade by the hand of 18-year-old Strauss is in the key of E-flat major, the key of the ‘Eroica’ and Strauss’ later work ‘A Hero’s Life,’ ” Miura says. “I hope the audience will enjoy the virtual musical dialogue between young Strauss and Beethoven in these two works.”

The orchestra concert comes days before two Miura compositions will be premiered at the JapanNYC Festival organized by Carnegie Hall, with Seiji Ozawa as artistic director, in March and April.

Miura’s “Mitate” will be performed by the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday, March 29. Line C3, also a percussion ensemble, debuts his “Blowout” at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center on Saturday, April 2. Both concerts begin at 8 p.m. Learn more.

A British holography artist and a member of the Bates College physics faculty offer lectures relating to the current Bates College Museum of Art holography exhibition, The Body Holographic: Harriet Casdin-Silver, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10, in Room 104, Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

The speakers are Pearl John, of London, whose talk is titled The Art of Holography; and Hong Lin, professor of physics, whose talk is titled The Physics Behind a Hologram. The event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6158.John uses large-format holography as a means of examining self-identity. She combines holographic images with text, video and photography to reach toward meanings that exist at the boundaries between words and images, and between artist and viewer. John’s holograms and installations have appeared in Japan, Europe and throughout the United States. She currently teaches laser technology in the United Kingdom.

Hong Lin has been at Bates since 1991. Her research involves crystals that diffract light in different directions, and particularly potential mechanisms for stabilizing these diffractions, which can affect the operation of optical devices.

The Body Holographic, a collection of work by a pioneering figure in the art of holography, runs through March 19. The first American artist to develop a body of holographic work, Casdin-Silver began working in holograms — flat images that appear to represent objects three-dimensionally — in 1968. As the title indicates, The Body Holographic concentrates on the human form and its potential as a site of psychological, sexual and spiritual energy.

The exhibition is made possible by the Synergy Fund, a gift to the museum to explore ideas across disciplines through the arts. The gift is helping the museum and the college to look more creatively at how exhibitions are curated, experienced and communicated to museum audiences.

Showing simultaneously are Between Science and Art, comprising botanical X-ray photographs by contemporary Ohio artist Judith K. McMillan, and New Acquisitions: Local and Global Contemporary Photography, featuring artists from Maine, China and Africa.

A member of the Maine Art Museum Trail, the Bates College Museum of Art is open to the public at no charge. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. School groups and tours are welcome; please call 207-786-8302 to schedule.